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The order of the world rewrote itself in the span of the Lesser Lord’s fall.

There had been three Lesser Lords serving under the High King of Hell for the entirety of the war.

Kat had seen the corpses of all three of them laid low.

But the beast that crashed to the floor in the center of the ballroom was unquestionably of the same caliber—if not something higher.

It drew itself up tall, triumphant, its forked tail thrashing, its many-horned head cocked to one side.

It wore a writhing cloak of shadows that occasionally parted to reveal its thick muscle and leathery hide.

In its hand, it held a sword that dripped something viscous and oily-looking, and its very presence seemed to gutter the torchlight.

“Back, everyone, back !” a high voice called over the crowd’s screams. In a flash, Faye Laurent had lunged to square with the beast, resplendent in her red gown, all seventy-five of her tokens radiant across her chest.

All seventy-five of them attuned. As if she’d known this was coming.

“I have a confession,” Faye announced to the room.

Her fists glowed a molten gold, and the Lesser Lord had locked its eyes on her like a deer frozen in a hunter’s sights.

“I have shamed my house, hoping to spare us from the greater shame of being ruled by a man so horrifically unsuited for the crown that he’s currently trying to crawl under a table rather than defend the people he’s assembled here tonight. ”

Behind her, Adrien offered no counterargument from the shelter of his fortifications, flanked on either side by his parents.

“It wasn’t Daya Imonde,” Faye continued.

“Over the course of the Augustine Road’s construction, I conspired with the remnants of the Demon Lord’s forces, hoping to place the prince in their sights and ensure that a more appropriate successor could take the throne.

That plan plainly failed, outmaneuvered by the efforts of our infantry—but the three Lesser Lords were working under the orders of a Final Lord, the Demon Lord’s own heir, who refused to accept that failure despite my efforts to convince it that there could be no path to victory.

It insisted on striking this celebration—and so it falls to me to redeem the good name of House Laurent and face the consequence of my arrogance. ”

She was teeth-rattling to look at, blazing with Aurean power, and once again, Kat was astonished this woman could only see her seventy-five-token arsenal as fundamentally weak.

The demon lowered its head. Its lips spread, baring a rictus smile. And from its cloak of shadows, it drew a silvery medallion that burned with cold fire.

Kat had grown well-acquainted with fear over three years of war. Most fear she could weather with her line at her side and the rest of the Telrusian forces at her back. Fear had kept her sharp and alive when little else could.

But the fear that gripped her now was of a different sort. Because the moment the Final Lord’s claws closed around that strange medallion, Faye’s magic winked out like a hood had been dropped over its fire.

Kat reached for her own alignment and found nothing. She reached, grounding herself with a hand around her token, but not even the amateur gesture could connect her to the heavenly plane.

All her life, she’d been told that Aurean magic was proof the angels watched over them from beyond the Seal of Heaven—that divine power could still protect this plane from the forces of evil.

It had never not been true.

But it seemed that before his defeat, the Demon Lord had succeeded in his quest. The crucible hadn’t been tipped, but the matter within it had already been smelted, and this Final Lord had recovered it as the citadel collapsed.

The High King of Hell had alchemized antigold—not in time to save himself but in time to wreak his vengeance on them all.

Starting not with the Augustines, but with Faye Laurent, now irrevocably defenseless in the Final Lord’s sights.

She seemed to have hoped for a glorious redemption, to atone for her mistakes by wiping out the last stain of evil on this land in plain sight of the nobility whose respect she’d spent her whole life clawing for with her Codex of Manners and her measly seventy-five tokens.

In the end, she didn’t even have a weapon to block the oil-slick sword that took her through the gut.

The ballroom’s panic boiled over, the screaming tripling in volume as highborns scrambled in every direction.

The royal guards had immediately tasked themselves with ushering the fray of gold-trimmed nobility with their now-useless tokens out of harm’s way.

Even if they’d made an attempt, they wouldn’t reach the prince in time—though the Final Lord was currently preoccupied with drawing its sword almost surgically back from Faye Laurent’s limp body.

But the hall was full of others—those used to squaring off against the legions of Hell with nothing holy, only a weapon in hand.

Their centurion was in no shape to lead them.

Even if her tokens weren’t smothered by antigold, Mira had barely recovered from the blow she took against the third Lesser Lord.

Kat found her in the chaos, a fixed point rooted to the spot among the scrambling highborns, her eyes blazing with equal weights of fury and frustration.

Until her gaze locked on Kat’s. She’d served under her centurion long enough to know exactly what Mira meant by the firm nod she passed her.

Kat drew a deep breath, pursed her trembling lips, and let out a long, piercing shriek of a whistle.

A call to assemble, the same one she’d heard from Mira a thousand times before.

She saw it echo through the soldiers still picking themselves up amid the shattered glass, heads snapping back to find the source of the noise, overriding the overpowering instinct to keep their focus on the most deadly thing in the room.

“THIRD CENTURY TO ME,” Kat hollered at the top of her lungs.

The Final Lord whirled. Its teeth were long, needlelike, and awful to look at as it leered at her with what could almost be considered a grin.

She could see in those ink-black eyes that it wasn’t just surprised—it was delighted.

This was the sort of beast that craved a fight, that wanted its prey to kick and screech and beg for a mercy it wasn’t capable of giving.

Well, she’d give it a fight. With everything she had, because if she didn’t, there would be no lifetime of peace.

Not while this evil still walked their plane of existence.

Not without the prince she’d spent the past few months protecting and all his misguided but generally correct ideals sitting on the throne.

It would have been easier if she had a weapon or two, but as the rest of the soldiers packed in tight around her, she spotted the tables that were scattered throughout the hall—tall enough for the partygoers to lean against them and sip their drinks, supported on three sturdy legs apiece.

“Grab those,” she ordered after another sharp whistle.

Emory was the first one to follow her command.

The wedge driven between them couldn’t change the fact that he’d trained relentlessly for moments like this.

Within seconds, the rest of the troops had followed his lead, tearing each table down into three passable weapons to hand out among the rest of them and a surface that, in a pinch, would have to do as a shield.

Kat took hers up with a swallow of trepidation, a feeling that only worsened when Emory slotted into place in front of her.

The tabletop he held didn’t look substantial enough to survive against the Final Lord—who seemed to be waiting patiently for them to get themselves in order, its tail flicking from side to side.

“Shields to the front,” Kat commanded. If the hosts were absent in their tokens, at least something out there was keeping her voice from shaking. “Everyone with a weapon, line up behind them. Everyone else, brace them with everything you have. Or find something to throw.”

She settled behind Emory, side by side with Von, who’d taken up his own table leg with a wary look back at her.

She wanted to tell him to run. To go live his bakery dream.

The rest of them could do their best to handle this.

There was no need to be brave. But she got the sense that the second she opened her mouth, she’d make a fool out of herself.

The camaraderie of soldiers with nothing but sticks in their hands was a powerful bond, and one not soon broken.

No matter how terrifying it looked when the Final Lord bent low and braced itself to charge.

Its nostrils flared, its cloak of shadows spinning wide enough that it darkened the torchlight.

It was a simple creature, like all its fellows.

It went for the largest, the most powerful.

And with every Aurean token in the room deadened, that role went to Kat and her patchwork century.

“ Brace, ” she shouted as the demon lunged.

Over the course of the campaign, she’d taken many hits from shock knights, but none as unarmored as this.

The Final Lord tore clean through the heart of her century, and Kat felt the rattle of its impact in every single one of her bones.

It cleaved a gap between her and Von, tossing its horned head like a bull, and she narrowly avoided being gored by one of the points on its rack as she was thrown clear.

She hit the ground knowing there would be no second chance—that this was the moment to give everything she had left.

Her beautiful dress had torn. Her fancy shoes scrabbled for purchase on the marble floor as she fought her way back to her feet and lunged, her snapped-off table leg raised high.

She saw her opening and hated it. There would be no chance for a fatal blow—only a weakening one, one that would make the Final Lord furious. But she was well past the point of being able to choose her battles.

Kat charged and gored her weapon deep into the back of the demon’s calf.

She was expecting a backhand. She’d forgotten the beast’s tail. It snapped like a whip, catching her in the gut and sending her skidding across the unforgiving stone of the floor. The entirety of her breath was driven from her lungs, and she gaped like a fish, floundering uselessly to replaceit.

She’d kept her grip on her weapon. She didn’t have much else going for her, but at least she had that. As her vision went spotty at the corners, she leveraged herself up on the butt end of the table leg.

There had been a moment there, brief but glorious, where she’d been everything Mira had ever hoped from her, everything Adrien had expected, everything her father had dreamed, the sum total of every bit of potential that had been placed upon her shoulders.

She had called the century to her. She had made a clear plan of action, had communicated it, had the trust of all her soldiers, and never once doubted that the calls she made were the correct ones.

For one shining instant, she had been a centurion in everything but rank.

Now Kat felt the moment she blew it. The moment she knew in her heart of hearts she would never be able to live up to those grand expectations.

The moment the Final Lord straightened, its tail thrashing as its gaze reeled back to the wreckage of the century scrambling for order.

Emory was thrown clear in the hit, and he was still down, slowly— too slowly —trying to get his feet underneath him.

Kat lunged on instinct—not for the century, not for the prince, not for the demon, but between it and the love of her life.

Months ago, she’d been one of a chorus of voices berating Emory for making the same mistake. She’d told him—and helped Mira prove to him by putting him on his back before the entire century—that she could hold her own. That the priority on the battlefield was always larger, loftier things.

But damn the century, damn the legion, damn the kingdom. If she had a bit of strength left in her, she wouldn’t waste it on anything but keeping him safe.

“Kat,” Emory groaned as she skidded to her knees next to him. He’d been trying to prop himself up with his makeshift shield, but she tore it from his weakened hands and squared to the Final Lord with her table leg raised high. “Don’t…You’ll…”

“Brace me,” she said. If she wasn’t going to be a perfect soldier tonight, at least one of them was, because Emory took the order without question, a quavering hand coming to rest at her hip as he leaned his shoulder against the column of her spine.

The Final Lord regarded them with a faint, amused chuff.

Then it turned its back and broke into a sprint, heading straight for the dais, where Adrien and the Augustine crown still cowered.

A shout went up across the ballroom from the onlookers, from the soldiers who’d been scattered by the general’s blow, from everyone who could do nothing but yell as the general charged with single-minded focus.

Kat had one singular second to reckon with the depths of her failure. She’d had an opening—another chance to keep the prince safe. Instead, she’d shown her hand.

And then the golden blur struck.

It moved so fast, for a moment Kat thought it couldn’t be anything other than Mira. But Mira, for all her toughness, relied on her tokens for that kind of strength and agility. Mira had fallen to the wayside, felled by the quelling of the angels’ magic and too injured to fight.

Into her place stepped the only soldier who’d kept training tenaciously long after the war had ended. Who’d stayed sharp, who’d waited for her opening, who now took it with so much vicious gusto it quieted the hall’s tumultuous noise in an instant.

She’d found herself a spear—one of the sturdy iron struts that had been torn from the ceiling.

Luck, fate, or perhaps the will of the angels had rendered the shaft of metal perfectly sized and sharpened for her purposes.

She’d thrown herself between the demon and the royal family with every last ounce of rage in her tiny body.

And Giselle put that makeshift spear clean through one of the Final Lord’s inky black eyes.